The present invention relates to timeslot interoperability between communicating platforms and more particularly to assessing timeslot interoperability between platforms communicating over a Time Division Multiple Access network.
Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) architectures are used for many applications. One example is Tactical Data Links (TDLs), which comprises a family of related technologies that have been developed over many years to coordinate and control the dissemination of information within the battlespace to support joint and combined operations. Consequently, various forms of TDL have been developed to support specific battle groups. The TDLs feature differing waveforms, bandwidths, protocols and capabilities.
One of the most widely used TDLs is Link 16 (or TADIL-J). At its most basic, the Link 16 network is divided up into a number of nets, and each net is subdivided into a number of timeslots that are allocated to participants for the transmission of messages; each timeslot is 7.8125 mS. Hence, for the network to operate successfully, each participant must know when to transmit, when to receive, and when to do neither. This information is provided via one or more documents published by the agency responsible for the network design, such as the Joint Data Link Management Organisation (JDLMO). The network design information is provided in the form of the human readable Network Initialisation Data Catalogue, a large PDF document, and, in the case of some platforms, a machine readable network initialisation (INDE) file.
Conventionally, in order to ascertain the compatibility of each network design the TDL practitioners analyse the machine-readable INDE file to confirm whether a particular platform will be able to receive the relevant timeslots. The source material is terse and can be difficult to understand, incurring a significant learning curve. The TDL practitioners typically manually execute a number of common queries over the terse INDE file. The INDE file, whilst in some ways highly explicit, also contains implicit data, such as the seemingly arbitrary groups of platforms, such that practitioners must consult the Network Initialisation Data Catalogue in order to identify members of each group. Also, in order to confirm timeslot compatibility between two platforms, practitioners must be cognisant of a number of implicit transmit/receive rules based on, for instance, the default net used within the TDL. Such analysis based on the vast amount of very detailed information is time consuming and prone to human error.
Embodiments of the present invention are intended to address at least some of the problems discussed above.